After he had spent a limited amount, the principal
at his disposal lay untouched, unrealized. He
got a certain measure of content from its sheer bulk
at his back; it ministered to his vanity, to his supreme
self importance. He liked negligently to
produce, in Simmons' store, a twenty or even fifty
dollar currency note, and then conduct a search
through his pockets for something smaller. He
drank an adequate amount of whiskey, receiving it
in jugs semi-surreptitiously by way of the Stenton
stage; Greenstream County was "dry," but whiskey
in gallons was comparatively inexpensive. He
would have gambled, but two dollars was a momentous
hazard to the habitual card players of the village.
He thought, occasionally, of taking a short
trip, of two or three days, to nearby cities outside
his ken, or to the ocean -- Gordon had never seen a
large body of water; but his life had travelled such
a narrow course, he was so accustomed by blood and
experience to the feel of the mountains, that, when
the moment arrived to consider an actual departure,
he drew back... put it off.

What he was subconsciously longing for was
youth. He was instinctively rebelling, struggling,
against the closing fetters of time, against the dilution
of his blood by time, the hardening of his bones,
the imperceptible slackening of his muscles. His
intimate contact with the vigorous youth of Lettice

[[169]]

p168 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p169w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p170

v?